Just a week ago, the Serbian National Assembly (Parliament) approved amendments to key judicial laws, proposed by a member of parliament from the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) (U. Mrdić). Critics in Serbia claim that these amendments, adopted quickly and without public consultation, will limit the independence of courts and prosecutors; weaken the powers of the High Prosecutorial Council, and return 11 of the 20 prosecutors currently working in the Public Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime (TOK), the counterpart of our SPAK, to the prosecutor’s offices from which they were temporarily transferred.

After these changes were publicly announced, the TOK issued a statement, which assessed that their adoption would paralyze its work and "completely block proceedings in the most complex and sensitive criminal cases."

In my opinion, the analogy of the storm warned by the socialist majority against SPAK in this case cannot be ignored.

In Serbia, the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) has been in power since 2012, while in Albania the SP has been in power since 2013. That is, in both countries, the majorities have been in power for a long and close period of time.

Both countries are in the process of EU integration, which implies close monitoring of the progress of this process by the European Commission structures.

The Public Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime (TOK) in Serbia was established in 2002, but underwent legal changes in the period after 2016; namely, it is an EU-supported unit and has a similar function to SPAK in the investigative process, focusing on organized crime and corruption of high-ranking state officials.

The human resources support of the TOK in Serbia, according to this act of the Serbian Parliament, has been limited, which cannot but lead to the difficulty of fulfilling the constitutional duties of this institution. In Albania, there has been little public debate on the limitations that the Parliament imposed on the financial and human resources available to SPAK. Thus, even though constitutional provisions require that “the Special Prosecution Office shall consist of at least 10 prosecutors” (Article 148/dh), while the workload appears to be much greater even for the 17 prosecutors who are currently there, Prime Minister Rama’s repeated public media attacks on their high salaries do nothing but arouse public anger towards them, even though SPAK is not at all responsible for the backlog of files in the Albanian justice system and the endless delays, as SPAK deals with an extremely small number of criminal cases – those related to corruption of high-ranking officials and organized crime in the country – but this distinction is little or not made at all by the “average citizen”.

If in Albania SPAK has several investigative files of senior officials of the country in its possession and last year the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Infrastructure, Belinda Balluku, was also taken into criminal investigation, in Serbia last year TOK filed charges against former ministers of the SNS government, G. Vesić and T. Momirović, who are suspected of corruption in the case of the reconstruction of the Belgrade-Budapest railway. Also, the current Minister of Culture and senior member of the SNS, N. Selaković, was accused of forgery of documents and abuse of office in the case of the General Staff.

TOK's accusations of corruption or abuse of office against former or current ministers of the Serbian government have been met with a broad campaign against this prosecution by pro-government media, and the work of the judiciary has been harshly criticized by key government figures, including President A. Vučić. A similar situation is occurring in Albania with coordinated attacks by the majority, part of the opposition against SPAK, as well as by KM Rama himself against the judiciary as a whole, including the most recent statement, according to which the Constitutional Court "did not find the strength" to prevent, according to him, "the government being taken hostage again" through an unusual mechanism...

Media sources indicate that in Serbia, the aforementioned legal amendments have aroused great concern in Brussels, to the extent that the European Commission declared to a Serbian media outlet that “these changes could represent a significant step back in Serbia’s commitment to the path of EU membership.” Explicitly, the formal proponent of these legal amendments in Serbia went further by declaring that the adoption of a series of judicial laws is “the first step towards returning the hijacked judiciary to the state and people of Serbia,” so that it is no longer run by “alienated centers under the control of foreign centers of power”… Some of these public statements clearly resemble the institutional and public positions of the socialist majority led by Mr. Rama. Thus, explaining the proposal to amend the Law on the Public Prosecutor's Office, the proposer of the amendments in Serbia emphasized "the need to amend some decisions related to the decision-making competence, for the referral of public prosecutors to other public prosecutors...".

It is unclear what scheme the ruling majority in Albania and Prime Minister Rama will follow in the steps to limit SPAK's activity, but what is known for sure is that the "government" of the prosecution (High Prosecutorial Council) and the "government" of the judiciary (High Judicial Council) are completely under their political control and, together with the Constitutional Court, are preparing for a real crusade against SPAK.

Also, the socialist majority in Albania has silently rejected the repeated request over the past two years by the SPAK leader that the Assembly consider constitutional amendments regarding the limitation of the mandate of SPAK prosecutors, giving them the opportunity to re-run for another term. This request has also been publicly articulated by senior officials of the US State Department.

Apparently, the suspension of implementation and withdrawal of controversial amendments to key laws on the judiciary that Serbian MPs approved a week ago, strongly requested by Michael McGrath, the European Union Commissioner for Justice, and the decisions of the Constitutional Court and the Parliament on the Balluku case in Albania will also be the "touchstone" for the dynamics not only of establishing the rule of law in both countries, but especially for the process of their integration into the EU.